ABSTRACT
Morocco’s domestic and foreign policy trajectories experienced significant changes within the two and a half decades since King Mohammed VI ascended the throne. Driven by two reasons of state – preserving the ruling Alaouite dynasty and safeguarding territorial integrity – the Moroccan Kingdom has turned to modernizing and upgrading its authoritarian system and reoriented Moroccan foreign policy away from the previous Western-centric approach and toward the African continent. This chapter outlines these transformations and delineates the specificities of authoritarianism in Morocco. On this basis, legitimation and cooptation – both at the domestic and the transnational level – are introduced as authoritarian practices that serve as tools to instrumentalize environmental sustainability within this context.
